Black tie is a half-dress Western dress code for evening events, originating in British and North American conventions for attire in the 19th century. In British English, the dress code is often refer
A man wearing a dinner suit with shawl lapels, a cummerbund, a black bow tie, and Oxford shoes
Illustration of British peaked lapel and shawl collar dinner jackets, 1898. As substitutes for tailcoats, dinner jackets were originally worn with full dress accessories, including white waist coat.
1888 American tuxedo/dinner jacket, sometimes called a dress sack
Black tie worn at a dinner party in the 1940s
White tie, also called full evening dress or a dress suit, is the most formal evening Western dress code. For men, it consists of a black tail coat worn over a white dress shirt with a starched or piq
Black tie
…where it was introduced in 1886 following the example of Europeans. Following the counterculture of the 1960s, black tie has increasingly replaced white tie for more formal settings in the United States, along with cultures influenced by American culture. Traditionally worn only for events after 6 p.m…
Dolores del Río in ball gown and Fred Astaire in white tie in Flying Down to Rio (1933)
Fashion plate from Costume Parisien (1823)
Artistic depiction of a man in white tie dress (The New Yorker, March 17, 1928)
White tie worn by Madonna dance crew